AMERICAN STATESMEN.1

III.

AMERICANS claim for Daniel Webster the highest place among
modern orators. The verification of such a claim would be a com-
plicated process. But there can be no doubt that Webster was a
magnificent speaker, or that his speeches, like those of Bright and
unlike those of Clay, have a literary value of the highest and most
lasting kind. In political oratory it would be hard to find anything
superior to the reply to Haine; in forensic oratory it would be
hard to find anything superior to the speech on the murder of
White; among show speeches it would be hard to find anything
superior to the Plymouth oration. The economical and financial
speeches have also the highest merits of speeches of that class.
The comparison of Webster to Demosthenes is not inappropriate.
Simplicity is the characteristic of both. We remember Cobden's
half-concealed disappointment at finding in Demosthenes, whom
he had been reading in a translation, so little that was florid or
impassioned. Webster had not much imagination, and he seldom
appealed to feeling. He reasons with irresistible force and in lan-
guage plain but well-chosen, terse, and thoroughly effective. His
sentences have been compared to the strokes of a trip hammer.
Like the strokes of a trip hammer they are in sureness of aim and
in the force with which they shatter the arguments on the other
side, but not in monotony, for their construction and connection are
sufficiently varied. From the manifest study of effect, which is the

American Statesmen: a Series of Biographies of Men conspicuous in the Political
History of the United States. Edited by John T. Morse, jun. (Boston, U.S.:
Houghton, Mifflin & Co.):—
John Quincy Adams. By John T. Morse,
jun.

Alexander Hamilton. By Henry Cabot
Lodge.

John C. Calhoun. By Dr. H. von Holst.
Andrew Jackson. By Professor W. G.

Sumner.

John Randolph. By Henry Adams.
James Monroe. By Pres. Daniel C. Gilman.
Thomas Jefferson. By John T. Morse, jun.

Daniel Webster. By Henry Cabot Lodge.
Albert Gallatin. By John Austin Stevens.
James Madison. By Sydney Howard Gay.
John Adams. By John T. Morse, jun.
John Marshall. By A. B. Magruder.
Samuel Adams. By James K. Hosmer.
Thomas H. Benton. By Theodore Roose-
velt.

Henry Clay. By Hon. Carl Schurz.
Patrick Henry. By Moses Coit Tyler.

special weakness of American oratory, otherwise so excellent at the present day, Webster must always have been free. He never descends to personal invective, and though he had great power of sarcasm and ridicule, he makes a very temperate use of it. A face and figure incredibly imposing, with a voice of admirable quality and power, seconded Webster's mental gifts, and made him, as soon as he opened his mouth, master of his audience. Master of his audience he remained when little but face, figure and voice, with the spell of immense reputation, was left. Even when he was tipsy, as occasionally happened, his august manner and solemn tones made nonsense profoundly impressive. The political future-the immediate political future at least-apparently belongs to the stump orator, and in England this is likely to be the case even more than in the United States, since in the United States the members of the Cabinet, not being in Congress, are chosen, as a rule, for their administrative qualities, whereas in England everything now goes by oratorical power. Wisdom will have to cultivate her voice and her delivery if she means to have any chance against blatherskite. But even if she succeeds in this, or Mr. Edison can help her by the invention of an oratoric speaking trumpet, she will find it difficult to remain wise when she is compelled, instead of quietly reflecting, exercising forecast, and maturing her policy, to be every day tickling the fancy of crowds, committing herself on all public questions, and talking in the exaggerative strain which, when telling things are to be said to a vast audience, it is hardly possible to avoid. A public man who is constantly on the stump must be in danger, one would think, of parting company not only with statesmanship but with reality. The expenditure of energy too is enormous, and cannot fail greatly to detract from the efficiency of the administrator and the legislator in his proper sphere. No sooner is the exhausting session over than the minister or leader is dragged out upon the stump. It is mournful to see how such men as Lord Hartington and Mr. Goschen are wasted and sometimes compromised by this fell demand. Some of our greatest statesmen would have broken down at once.

In Webster's day, however, the stump, though gaining ground, had not got the upper hand. His usual audience, the Senate, was eminently favourable to the oratory of reason. He remained not only an orator, but a statesman and a strong pillar of the State. But his moral force was not equal to his mental power. In the gigantic body of his intellect there dwelt a soul which was not gigantic. From his youth upwards he appears to have been rather selfish, very ready to accept the services of others, which he had a wonderful power of commanding, and not so ready to acknowledge them. He was given to excess in wine. He ran carelessly into debt, and was not above having his debts paid for him, though by so doing he could hardly fail to lay himself, as a public man,

under inconvenient obligations. It is said that upon being reminded that one of his bills had fallen due, he replied, with a majestic wave of his hand, Let it be paid.' The reply to Haine, which was his greatest triumph, proved also his greatest misfortune. It made him a candidate for the Presidency, and when a man has become a candidate for the Presidency it is difficult for him, as we have seen already in the cases of Madison and Clay, to walk upright. What can it be that lends such overpowering and fatal attractiveness to this prize? A strong man's head surely ought not to be turned or his conscience perverted by the prospect of mounting an elective throne which has been pressed by Jackson, Harrison, Van Buren, Tyler, Polk, and Buchanan. The President has a qualified veto on legislation; otherwise his office is merely executive, and in ordinary times decidedly inferior in importance to that of a Prime Minister, who is the legislative as well as the administrative head of the state. He is constantly exposed to calumny, to which he is hardly at liberty to reply. He has scarcely a moment which he can call his own, and office-seekers beset him like a swarm of mosquitoes. Ah, my dear friend,' said Lincoln to one who, seeing his sad face after Chancellorsville, spoke words of comfort, it is not Chancellorsville, it is that postmastership of yours at Pedlington.' His term over, the President descends not only to privacy but to obscurity, it may be to poverty; for the Republic, while lavishly generous to her soldiers, is unwilling to provide for the retirement of anyone who has served her in a civil capacity, even as head of the State. But the Presidential election is the Derby of American politics. The excitement about it, which leads to an enormous expenditure of money in electioneering, is largely of a sporting character, and the moral atmosphere which it generates is closely akin to that of the Turf.

If Webster's oratory had ever approached the verge of declamatory violence it was when in his early days he was denouncing slavery. In his eloquence the conscience of New England found its most solemn and thrilling voice. But with the aspiration after the Presidency was born in his breast a hankering for the Southern vote. From that time his tone in speaking of slavery began to change. He said less and less about its evils, more and more about its right to existence under the Constitution and the duty of obeying the laws enacted for its security, especially the fugitive slave law, which of all things connected with the system galled the Northern conscience most. At last, in his too famous 'Seventh of March' speech, he apostatised outright, and the name of the fallen archangel was heard no more in heaven. After all, happily for him, he missed the prize of his apostasy and escaped the ignominy of standing in history as a pro-slavery President. The South was willing enough to use the convert, but it preferred trusting its interests to an older and a sincerer friend. Webster had felt an assurance of

success which in any case would have been excessive, since he had little of Clay's magnetism and to the mass of his party he was an object rather of admiration than of love. Few would have wept and nobody would have died of grief at his defeat. The rest of his life was passed under the darkest of all clouds, that in which, with the shadow of misfortune, is blended the shadow of a desertion of the right. Theodore Parker has a very fine passage on Webster's fall.

This, however, was not the first occasion on which Webster had turned his coat. He had previously ratted from Free Trade to Protection. The speeches which he made in favour of Free Trade and against Protection are still some of the weightiest weapons in the Free Trade armoury; yet when the Protective policy had developed manufactures in New England, and brought over his constituents to that side, he put his principles in his pocket and upheld the Protective tariff. To deny his change is idle. All that can be said is that it was not without excuse. What Protection has once done it is very difficult to undo. Industries are built on the false foundation, and if it is suddenly removed may fall with a crash, which can hardly fail to produce distress for a time. The fear of this it is which at present makes Americans who are by conviction Free-Traders hesitate to vote for a great and sudden change in the tariff. In Canada Protection is a thing of yesterday; yet it has already created artificial interests which greatly increase the difficulty of securing for the Canadians the inestimable boon of free trade with the continent of which their country is a part.

Webster's lapses, though one of them was terrible, must not be allowed to put his services as a statesman out of sight. One of those services was the peaceful settlement of the Canadian boundary question by the Ashburton treaty. Webster's fidelity as a negotiator to the interest of his country was vindicated by Lord Palmerston's denunciation of the treaty as a surrender on the part of England. His moderation and regard for international morality are vindicated by Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, who seems to think that to agree to an equitable settlement with Canada was a mistake and that she ought to have been despoiled without compunction. Canada herself has always echoed the complaint of Lord Palmerston. Gradually she will comprehend the situation and become aware that it is hopeless to expect the British democracy to go to war about a Canadian question. Nor can the day be very distant when England will begin to see that nothing but responsibility and peril is left her as a nominal Power on the American continent. She may even now be wise enough to listen with caution to those who advise her to place her military road to India in the keeping of an unarmed colony and within the grasp of the party hostile to her in the United States.

In the early days of the Republic, while the slave-owners declined to concur with the framer of the Declaration of Independence in

branding themselves, under colour of branding George the Third, as unchristian and piratical monsters, the attitude of slavery was apologetic. It seemed to be conscious that it was a highly questionable relic of the past, and only to desire time to die quietly and with decency. After the vast expansion of the cotton interest, consequent on the discovery of the cotton gin, slavery began to present itself as a permanent necessity, and took up in its own defence the position which was taken up in its defence by Clay, asserting that it was the only possible relation between the white and black races. The difficulty of placing on a footing of equality two races of which the blood could never mingle was, in fact, the strongest argument in favour of the continuance of the institution, and the only one which was not obviously repugnant to morality.

But an abuse in which many are interested, and which is politically powerful, whether it be slavery or monopoly, seldom fails to find a philosopher who will prove that, in spite of all seeming, the evil is good. This part was played in the case of slavery by John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, whose passionate and probably sincere advocacy of a bad and desperate cause has made him one of the most curious figures in the history of opinion. His name (Colquhoun) denotes that he, like Andrew Jackson and Stonewall Jackson, was by extraction a Scotch Irishman, one of a race endowed with qualities not less evil in their perversion than excellent when directed aright. He had probably inherited a strong Old Testament conception of the destiny of the children of Ham. Calhoun set out as an ordinary politician, aiming, like Clay and Webster, at the Presidency, and unkind critics have averred that only when he found the quest of the Presidency hopeless did he give vent to his disappointment and seek to gratify his ambition in another way by standing forth as the daring champion of slavery and arraying the slave States against the rest. Mr. Von Holst, in the excellent volume which he has contributed to this series, takes what is at once the more charitable and the more interesting view. By whatever door, whether that of ambition or philosophic conviction, the idea that slavery was the best of all social and political systems found access, having once entered, it evidently took full possession of Calhoun's soul. His characteristic, as he appeared to Harriet Martineau, was the narrow intensity of a man under the dominion of an idea. The house may have been swept and garnished by foiled ambition, but there can be no doubt that the spirit of slavery entered in. Nor, when touched by the spear of Abolitionist ethics, did the Prince of Darkness fail to tower up in considerable might and majesty. The moral force of the Northern conscience was henceforth confronted by another force, also after its fashion moral. Calhoun cast away, as utterly unworthy, the plea that the existing relation between the two races in the slave-owning States was a necessary evil. He held it, he said, to be a good, as it had proved